Administration urges approval of new GMO crops to fight super weeds

The Obama administration on Friday said it expects to approve corn and soybeans that are genetically engineered to tolerate a 1940s-era herbicide 2,4-D, used mainly on lawns and golf courses to kill broadleaf weeds.

That’s because Monsanto’s trademark RoundUp and other glyphosate herbicides no longer work on the super-weeds that are sprouting on the 170 million acres of genetically engineered crops (also known as GMOs, or genetically modified organisms) now planted in the Southeast and Midwest.

As we said back in 2012, initial approvals of genetically engineered crops back in the 1990s had unintended consequences, including “vast increases in herbicide use that have created impervious weeds now infesting millions of acres of cropland.” The herbicides at the same time have killed milkweeds, the host plant for monarch butterflies. Scientists have definitively linked a catastrophic decline in monarch butterflies to herbicide use on GMO crops.

Weed ecologists expect the next generation of genetically modified crops to repeat the cycle, encouraging heavy use of 2,4-D and dicamba, creating still hardier weeds.

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the only real solution to weed control is to return to more ecologically sound farming practices such as cover crops and crop rotations.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a part of the Department of Agriculture, will take public comments on its draft environmental impact statement for 45 days once it is published as expected on Jan. 10. Gurian-Sherman said USDA then must respond to comments in a final environmental impact statement. He expects thousands of comments that will take the agency three to six months to digest.